Few clubs know what it takes to win a league championship more than Liverpool.
Only one English side have gained more and, with Jurgen Klopp’s men locked into another epic Premier League title battle with Manchester City this season, hopes are high the tally with their Old Trafford neighbours could be levelled by the end of May at twenty apiece. A variety of different ingredients are necessary to ensure a gruelling nine-month campaign peaks at the right time and fresh legs providing an extra boost while legs and minds are tiring during the run-in can often prove crucial.
Since the advent of transfer windows in the 21st century, this nowadays tends to apply to the return of injured players but - back when clubs could trade freely throughout a season until the traditional ‘transfer deadline’ at the end of March - a new face providing a spark to help drag his flagging team-mates over the line was not an uncommon occurrence and there have been few finer examples than when Liverpool won the last of their ten titles in fifteen years as the club’s dominance of the 1970s and 80s drew to a close.
READ MORE: Chelsea might have just put Liverpool's perfect Mohamed Salah replacement up for sale
READ MORE: Alan Shearer 'certain' about Liverpool signing as Man City message sent
It was one of the more unusual transfer deals of that LFC era and brought to Anfield the kind of kind of whole-hearted if occasionally limited character Liverpudlians often relate to, creating a cult hero who in a short but eventful spell provided a series of memorable moments which are still regarded with fondness and no little amusement.
The spring of 1990 saw Kenny Dalglish’s Reds chasing the ‘double Double’ for third successive season as they sought to repeat their feat of the Scot’s first year in charge as player-manager in 1985/86 when they came become only the third club that century (and fifth ever) to secure both of English football’s top honours in the same campaign.
The aftermath however of the previous April’s Hillsborough tragedy when 97 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed in Europe’s worst ever sporting disaster hung heavy. When the football season concluded after a period of mourning, the Reds players - having attended funerals and counselled the bereaved and injured as best they could - were compelled by the Football Association to play their remaining eight matches within 23 days and won the FA Cup in an emotional and dramatic extra-time victory over Merseyside neighbours Everton before losing their championship to Arsenal in the last seconds of the season when the title contenders met in the final match of a marathon and seismic campaign at Anfield on May 26.
After a summer of rest and reflection, regaining the league title was number one priority for Dalglish and his men and they served early notice as to their intentions with a 9-0 annihilation of newly-promoted Crystal Palace in September, the club’s biggest ever victory in the First Division, to go top. They would remain there much of the campaign aside from a couple of short periods in late autumn and early spring but never with the kind of points lead and rarely the authority which marked their 1988 procession to glory, meaning the manager was on the look-out for new blood to freshen up his attacking options and bolster his squad for the business end of the season.
Meanwhile, in the unlikely surroundings of Belgium, a 26-year-old Israeli international striker was kicking his heels having been told by Standard Liege to find himself a new club. Ronny Rosenthal had grown up next to his local team Maccabi Haifa’s Kiryat Eliezer stadium and quickly become a favourite due to his startling pace, penetrating runs and eye for goal, helping Haifa to their historic first championship in 1985 before moving to northern Europe to sign for Club Brugge the following year. He helped them to league title in 1988 but was sold to Standard Liege that summer and by December 1989 had fallen out of favour and found himself surplus to requirements.
Rosenthal had become one of Israel’s most prominent players and that autumn had been part of the national team which narrowly lost 1-0 in a two-legged play-off to a Colombia side featuring Carlos Valderrama and Rene Higuita who qualified instead for the following summer’s World Cup in Italy, and his difficulties in Belgium - where a number of Israeli internationals plied their trade - came to the attention of one of the country’s top agents who had connections at Liverpool.
Pini Zahavi ultimately became known as one of football’s most powerful deal-brokers after building friendships with the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Graeme Souness, Alex Ferguson and Terry Venables, being involved with a number of high-profile transfers in the Premier League era as well as playing a role in Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea and Alexandre Gaydamak’s of Portsmouth. His first ever deal though was the late Avi Cohen’s move from Maccabi Tel Aviv to Anfield in 1979 and happened while Zahavi was a journalist with a keen interest in English football working for Israeli newspapers (which remained his main profession until 1988) who had a chance encounter with Liverpool club secretary, Peter Robinson.
“From an early age I was mad on English football and used to travel there to watch games”, he told the Blizzard years later. “I was a Liverpool supporter and one year I went to see the Christmas fixtures and on the way back home got stuck at the airport due to the weather. The airline took us to a hotel in central London until the weather improved and there I saw Peter Robinson, Liverpool’s secretary. I approached him and said that there was a fantastic player in Israel, Avi Cohen, that I thought could help the team.”
Rosenthal had been left devastated when after signing a contract subject to a medical with Udinese the Italian club pulled out of deal citing a back problem which the Israeli felt was a cover for the fact they decided to pursue Argentine striker Abel Balbo and Zahavi, keen to help his compatriot jump-start his career, came close to securing a deal with Spaniards Espanyol then got him a trial with First Division Luton Town where he made a good impression but the Hatters didn’t have enough money to buy him. The have-boots-will-travel forward also took part in a training match for Scottish side Hibernian against Rangers but neither side was prepared to take a gamble on an out-of-work Israeli and options were looking thin on the ground with the late season transfer deadline day looming when Zahavi took a call from Kenny Dalglish who said he was looking for a fast, physical player with fight in his game.
“When I heard that I immediately offered Ronnie to him”, Zahavi said. “I knew he was looking for a team and I thought that he was the right player for Kenny. He left an excellent impression during the training session. He was fresh and lively while they were totally knackered.”
Three goals in three games for Liverpool reserves followed and were enough for Dalglish to agree a loan move until the end of the season, only the second time the Reds had ever been involved in such a deal after Ian Rush’s 12-month return to Anfield following his £3.2 transfer to Juventus agreed in the summer of 1986.
Rosenthal was confident he could take the chance to prove himself on the big stage but told the ECHO years later, “I was enthusiastic to come because as a player you believe in your own ability. I felt in my own mind that I was able to operate at a level to stay there but it was a new culture for me and my English was not the best. Kenny was comfortable in offering me a trial but such was the level at Liverpool then it was not easy of course. They were a top team and weren't sure what sort of level an Israeli player operating in Belgium would be at. He'd watched some video clips of me but obviously it's not like today with lots of information about players from different countries. I could understand the basics but it wasn’t just that.
“Coming to Liverpool where people talk quickly and with the Scouse accent was difficult for me while trying to grasp the things Kenny Dalglish was telling me was even harder. I landed at Manchester Airport and Ron Yeats came to pick me up and drove me directly to Melwood. He was really nice throughout the journey and tried to speak slowly so I could understand him. He introduced me to Kenny and the first thing the manager said to me was ‘Are you alright?’ but at the time I had no idea what he was saying. I turned to Ron and asked, ‘Can you translate?’ He was on the floor!”
Rosenthal was first named on the bench when the Reds took on Southampton at Anfield on the final day in March having missed the chance to return to the top of the table three days earlier when losing 1-0 at Tottenham to a late Paul Stewart goal, their first defeat in 21 matches since the previous November when losing 2-0 to rock-bottom Sheffield Wednesday on their first return to Hillsborough. A handsome televised win at Old Trafford two weeks before the Saints’ second trip to Anfield of the season after losing in the FA Cup fifth round the previous month had displayed Dalglish’s side’s championships credentials for the nation to see but the loss at White Hart Lane highlighted again the frailties of an ageing side managing the inevitable physical and emotional exhaustion of the previous season which they had largely managed to get away with in what was not in truth a vintage First Division.
While understandably unaware of the turmoil the city was going through, Rosenthal could relate to some of the psychological issues at Anfield after losing the league title in his last match in Israel to an 89th minute goal and a year later suffering the loss of young Maccabi Haifa starlet and close friend Avi Ran who was killed in a jet ski accident on the Sea of Galilee during the summer break. “I had mad motivation”, he admitted. “I was desperate to succeed after not playing for three months.”
He may have been expecting to have to wait a bit longer after seeing John Barnes head his new side in front against Southampton after only 15 minutes but, after Paul Rideout headed an equaliser ten minutes before half time, former Reds midfielder Jimmy Case cracked home a trademark 20-yard drive blockbuster three minutes after the break. Anfield was getting tense with Liverpool labouring in their search for an equaliser when Rosenthal was introduced with 20 minutes left in place of Steve McMahon and his first involvement two minutes later saw an energetic run win the corner which Russell Osman nodded into his own net to restore parity. Ian Rush slammed home the winner eight minutes from time to restore the Reds to the top of the table, level on points but with a game in hand on Aston Villa and, with Graham Taylor’s side suffering a shock televised home defeat to Manchester City the following day, Dalglish’s men would not be deposed again.
“It was amazing for me to play in front of the Liverpool fans and be at Anfield for the first time even as a substitute. It gives you the push that you need as a player and I'd never experienced anything quite like it. At the time I was considered to be one of the fastest players in the league. Technically I was not a great player but I had pace and a football brain. I've never been a prolific scorer but I probably set up more than I scored as I had the speed to go directly to the goal and in the eyes of the fans when you see someone who can run at opposition players then it's pleasant to watch. It's got even quicker since then though. Maybe rather than being one of the top-10 fastest players, I might only be in the top-100.”
The Israeli did not feature in Liverpool’s next two matches - a 2-1 home win over Wimbledon and the shock 4-3 FA Cup semi-final loss after extra time to Crystal Palace at Villa Park - but in the wake of the agonising defeat to the same Eagles side they had won both First Division encounters against by a combined score of 11-0 and, with Peter Beardsley struggling with a stress knee fracture that would rule him out of the rest of the season, Rosenthal was pleasantly surprised to find himself handed a start by Dalglish three days later when the Reds travelled to play Charlton Athletic at Selhurst Park, where the Addicks were playing their home matches at the time after being forced out of their home ground The Valley.
“An hour before the game he told me that I would be in the starting eleven. I was hoping to be a sub at the most, I never thought that I would start and when he told me that, it was like a cold shower. I told myself this is my chance and I just wanted to show myself and justify the decision.”
He did not take long as Liverpool - also missing Ian Rush and Ray Houghton through injury as well as Swedish defender Glenn Hysen who was on international duty which meant a first start also for young defender Nick Tanner - bounced back strongly from their FA Cup heartbreak with a resounding victory to strengthen their grip on the championship race, with the Israeli enjoying the debut of his dreams. He opened the scoring with his first Liverpool goal on 26 minutes after playing a one-two with John Barnes and dummying two defenders before firing a right foot shot past former Reds reserve goalkeeper Bob Bolder from an acute angle, doubled the lead five minutes after half time with a fierce left-foot drive into the roof of the net after being played in by Steve Staunton and completed the classic hat-trick just after the hour mark having combined with Barnes down the left and meeting the winger’s cross with a well-placed diving header.
Barnes completed the 4-0 rout three minutes from time and Charlton boss Lennie Lawrence later revealed how Rosenthal’s shock inclusion had not turned out the way he had expected or hoped, saying “It was a relief to see the team sheet and to find out that Beardsley was not there. Instead they started with somebody we didn’t know. The relief turned very quickly into sheer horror. They set Ronnie on us and he tormented us that day.”
For the Israeli, it was real breakthrough he had been craving to show what he was capable of. “Suddenly I felt a part of the team”, he admitted. “Until the Charlton game, there was some distance but then the communication became much warmer. On the bus there were celebrations and Dalglish told me to use the phone on the bus to call anyone I knew and tell them about this match. I’m not the emotional type. I am calm most of the time and I couldn’t stay calm after this type of match, I couldn’t sleep that night.”
He kept his place in the side the following weekend when - a day before the first anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster - Liverpool took Nottingham Forest at Anfield in the First Division and, after the release of 95 red balloons and with both teams wearing black armbands, Rosenthal grabbed the opener on 12 minutes with Steve McMahon adding a second three minutes later. Two second half goals earned Brian Clough’s men a point however, as they had in the return fixture at the City Ground on New Year’s Day, and the Israeli found himself back on the bench despite four goals in his last two games when Liverpool travelled to Highbury four days later for the biggest hurdle left in their bid to regain the title.
The second half slip against Forest coupled with Aston Villa’s win over Chelsea had cut the Reds’ lead at the top to one point still with a game in hand and, while Graham Taylor’s men faltered themselves losing 2-0 at Manchester United the night before Liverpool travelled to the capital, the reigning champions - 12 points behind the Reds also with five games left and one behind Everton in third with a game in hand - were hoping a late run may revive a flagging defence of their title which had seen them knock Dalglish’s team out of the League Cup the previous October with a late Alan Smith goal.
The Gunners had the better of a first half against a Liverpool side featuring a back five, an occasional Dalglish tactic which brought better results in the earlier years of his reign, and deservedly led four minutes before the break when Paul Merson reacted first to Paul Davis’s quick free-kick to hook left-footed past Bruce Grobbelaar. Ronnie Whelan replaced Jan Molby two minutes after the interval but it was when Rosenthal was introduced for Steve Staunton on 64 minutes that the game was transformed to such a significant extent the Israeli was given the man of the match award despite only playing barely a quarter of it.
His first involvement saw him display excellent control and strength to trap a loose ball and hold off Tony Adams before spinning away and haring off towards goal where the England defender was already rattled enough to hack him down from behind and pick up a booking. His direct running and raw pace added a new dimension to the Reds attack while unnerving the previous relatively-untroubled Gunners’ defence and, after missing a far post header from a free kick, Rosenthal had a penalty shout turned down then set up Barnes for a chance blazed over before as the champions-elect tightened the screw before with, just four minutes left, another dynamic Rosenthal surge down the left saw him pull the back from the byline and, when Steve Nicol at the far post returned the ball into the centre, John Barnes beat the offside trap to control and cooly slot past Lukic for the vital equaliser.
Remarkably, as the closing minutes played out ITV’s Brian Moore invited co-commentator Ron Atkinson to give his ‘somewhat controversial’ man of match with the Old Swan-born former Manchester United manager picking Rosenthal despite the substitute only been on the field for around 25 minutes and saying, “We’ve been sat here watching a fairly predictable match and the guy Rosenthal has come on and lit the game up. He really has changed it, every time he’s had the ball he’s been electric. People like to be entertained and he’s been fantastic to watch. There’s no doubt that Rosenthal’s introduction has lifted Liverpool’s game and eventually led to the equaliser.”
A pained Villa manager Graham Taylor was in the studio watching Liverpool extend the lead over his side to two points with a game in hand and added, “The goal had been coming for some time. As soon as Rosenthal came on, you’ve now got two people with him and John Barnes capable of running at people and taking defenders on. It was a different Liverpool as soon as that substitution was made.”
“Ronny Rosenthal, who has made huge impact since his arrival at Liverpool, brought them closer to the championship”, wrote the Times afterwards. “Although John Barnes scored the goal, the Israeli international was the one responsible for the turnaround in the game.. for an hour, Arsenal were more lively, coherent and dangerous than Liverpool but Rosenthal’s entry brought breathtaking speed to a match that lacked it until then.”
The unstoppable Rosenthal opened the scoring back at Anfield the following Saturday to make it five in his last four games as Dalglish’s men closed in on the club’s 18th league championship with a 4-1 home victory over Chelsea which was confirmed a week later as, with Anfield celebrating a hard-fought 2-1 win victory over Queens Park Rangers after goals from Ian Rush and a John Barnes penalty cancelled out Colin Clarke’s opener, news came through that Aston Villa had drawn after losing a 3-1 lead at home to Norwich which meant Liverpool were champions with two games to spare, sparkling jubilant celebrations on the pitch and in the stands.
Kenny Dalglish made his first appearance of the season - and the 515th and final one of his Liverpool playing career - as a second half substitute in a 1-0 home win over Derby County sealed by Gary Gillespie’s 81st minute strike before the trophy was presented the following Tuesday night, and the Reds and Rosenthal finished the campaign in style with a 6-1 final day victory at Coventry City, the Israeli scoring twice to take the final tally of his loan spell to seven goals in eight appearances, three of which had been from the substitutes bench. It was not enough to earn him a championship medal, falling short of the 14 games then required, but he had demonstrably made exactly the kind of impact Dalglish had been looking for and had made his case for a permanent deal inarguable.
“Ronnie Rosenthal had a big effect, giving Liverpool a kick in the backside”, Aston Villa’s ever gracious manager Graham Taylor accepted. “Of course Hillsborough affected the team. How could it not affect them? How do you still play football as if it is much bigger than life and death when you’ve just learned in the most horrific way that it is not? He moved them on all of a sudden. At that time my view was I pretty well knew every footballer in the world - who was this Rosenthal? For that short period of time towards the end of the season he actually lifted our major rivals to the title. So the name Ronny Rosenthal went into my brain. He gave them an unpredictability which helped them win the championship.”
John Barnes had struck a hat-trick at Highfield Road to take his season tally to a career best of 28 in all competitions and the Jamaican-born winger - who won a second Football Writers’ Player of the Year award that season after his 1988 double - paid tribute to the Israeli’s ability to provide something different at a time when the team really needed it.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say Ronny won the league for us that year but Liverpool needed something. We were a very good side, the best in England but we got a bit complacent. We needed a spark. We were winning games and sometimes we weren’t playing well and were dropping points, we needed something to ignite us again and that was Ronny doing things that surprised a lot of people. Maybe people weren’t used to Ronny, they were used to people like Rush, Beardsley, Aldridge. Ronnie was a different type of player, very aggressive running with the ball. Rush was good off the ball, Beardsley was a good dribbler and passer but wasn’t a powerful runner. Aldridge didn’t run with the ball at all ; he was just in the right place at the right time. So when we were playing games where they could control the situation, Ronny was something they couldn’t control. We were going through a bad time and Ronny came, he was in the right place at the right time, at the right club at the right season, not just for the player but for the club. Not to say that Ronny was better than Ian Rush or Peter Beardsley but at that particular time he gave us something extra.”
“Without him we wouldn’t have won it,” Dalglish later reflected. “He was fast, he scored goals and he was different. He justified the gamble on him 100%. He was vital is us winning the championship. He changed games, scored vital goals and disrupted the opponents. When he was brought on during games, it galvanised the fans and they pushed the team forward.”
The nature of the gamble taken on Rosenthal was illustrated by the fact the club did not negotiate the detail of any potential future transfer before bringing him in on loan, a decision they were left to rue after having to pay Standard Liege £1.1m - the most any English club had ever paid at the time for an overseas player - when making the deal permanent that summer.
“Every championship is sweet but to win it in England with Liverpool was the peak of my career”, Rosenthal admitted. “Especially after what I went through that year. I felt like I’d earned the right to enjoy it. It was great to go into a team like that with so much talent and that really helped with my adaptation. This, and the contribution that I made over the remainder of the season led to Liverpool making the decision to sign me permanently that summer. I shone from the very beginning of my career at Liverpool, but they didn’t have an automatic option to sign me – maybe because they hadn’t considered that I would make this kind of impact. Liverpool had to negotiate a new deal with Standard Liege to buy me and in the end they paid double the money because the transfer fee was about £1.1m, or $2m back then.”
In truth, Rosenthal would never enjoy the same kind of sustained success in the three and a half years which followed as a permanent Liverpool player. He was initially unable to get a sniff of a start as the champions began their defence with eight straight league victories - which including the four they ended the previous campaign with equalled Everton’s record of 12 dating back to the last century - not getting his first goal of the season until late November when coming off the bench to score what appeared to be a late Kop end winner against Manchester City after Peter Reid’s side had led only for Niall Quinn to snatch a stoppage time equaliser.
He was not handed a starting shirt until three days before Christmas when an injury to Peter Beardsley opened the door and, having scored twice in a 3-2 win over Southampton, would begin four of the next five games finding the net again in the New Year’s Day victory over Leeds United at Anfield. However, the last of those starts against Brighton in the FA Cup at the end of January would be his final appearance for the man who had brought him to Anfield and given him his chance as weeks later, shortly after a chaotic 4-4 draw in an FA Cup fifth round replay at Goodison Park, Kenny Dalglish stunned the world of football with his shock resignation as Reds manager as the pressure of the two decades at the top with Celtic and Liverpool coupled with the strain of leading the club and the city through the trauma of Hillsborough took its toll.
“I will always remember the day when he came into the dressing room before training and said ‘I’m resigning’", Rosenthal said. “All the players were shocked, it was the last thing that people expected, but you are professional and you have to carry on playing football – and that’s it. I was not with Kenny for a long time, but he was someone who wanted to play beautiful football, and yeah he was very, very clever.”
Rosenthal gave new manager Graeme Souness, who took over almost two months later after Ronnie Moran’s spell as caretaker boss, an early glimpse of what he could do by scoring only his fifth and final goal of the campaign with a typically rumbustious run and shot to draw the Reds level from two down in the Scot’s third game in charge at Chelsea but the Londoners recovered to win 4-2 and another defeat at Nottingham Forest two days later confirmed the concession of the championship to Arsenal again and began what would ultimately be a near-three decade wait for another league title.
With the Anfield board backing the new manager and a British record £2.9m being spent on bringing in Welsh forward Dean Saunders in from Derby County to partner his compatriot Ian Rush, Rosenthal’s opportunities were reduced further in 1991/92 with the Israeli managing only three goals in 27 appearances (just nine of them from the start) as, despite winning the club’s fifth FA Cup with Wembley victory over Second Division Sunderland, a sixth place league finish - the Reds’ lowest since 1965 - was indicative of the decline Liverpool were falling into as football’s revolution with the onset of the Premier League began.
Rosenthal later told the Athletic, “The problem Liverpool had was that the game changed around that time, and other clubs used to bring more players in and got better with their scouting. Liverpool used to bring in the best British players but then the other clubs started bringing the best players from the continent. Souness managed like he played. He was a very impulsive player, and he was all about players working hard. It was good encouraging them, but he doesn’t really look at the beautiful side of the game. When you are a coach you need to think twice before you do something. You are the decision-maker and if you have done something wrong you may not be able to fix it afterwards. There were good things in Souness, but it didn’t help him in that respect. This is only one aspect though. For me, above all, the signings were wrong because he kept bringing players to Liverpool who were talented, but time had moved on. He needed to bring in more top athletes. That is why other clubs were better. Arsenal and Manchester United started developing their scouting system, academies, etc. They produced much more than Liverpool who kept buying the best players in England. That was not sufficient to win the league.”
Despite not even making a match day squad for the final eight games of the previous season after scoring in a home defeat to Wimbledon, Rosenthal found himself in the starting line up in the 4-3 Charity Shield defeat to champions Leeds United at Wembley and featured in the all of the first five games, mostly as substitute, before getting the nod when Liverpool travelled to Aston Villa in mid-September just days after the Birmingham club had paid £2.2m to bring Dean Saunders to Villa Park after barely a year at Anfield. The Welshman would score twice in a 4-2 win for his new club and Rosenthal would also find the net with a late consolation strike but not before producing a horror miss which decades on is still a favourite on blooper videos.
With the game goalless midway through the first half, the Israeli forward latched on to a long David James punt after defender Shaun Teale missed his header and sidestepped goalkeeper Nigel Spink to leave himself with an open net but, after taking a touch, clipped the ball goalwards only to see the ball bounce off the crossbar and be cleared to safety by Paul McGrath.
Reflecting years later on the miss which brought his moment of footballing infamy, he said, “It bothered me a lot at the time. I was embarrassed and in the dressing room the other players didn’t let me forget but it happens. Of course you are embarrassed for a couple of minutes after the game, but you have some players who take everything so seriously. I’m someone who did not celebrate so much when I scored and so when I missed, I was just like: ‘So what?’ Sometimes you have players who are extremes. They go crazy if they score, and if they miss it’s the end of the world. I am completely the opposite.
“Does it bother me now? No it doesn't matter now. I'm glad I missed because I'm still on the map because of it. Sometimes I can go for one whole week without having to talk about it. People are sometimes scared to ask me about it, and I tell them: 'no no, ask me'. You never forget the players who missed at the lower level, only the top level. It's nothing, OK, you've missed, it's finished. You need to be strong in the head and have the right mentality."
Rosenthal found the net in the following game, even if it was an alarming 4-4 League Cup home draw with Chesterfield with saw Souness’s side 3-0 down at one stage to the third-tier outfit, and a brace in a 4-1 win against Middlesbrough at the start of November saw a run of consecutive starts and further strikes against QPR (a memorable late winner in a televised Monday fixture) and Crystal Palace to take his tally to six in 18 appearances. He would go on to start 20 matches for Liverpool that campaign - by a distance the most during his time at the club - and, although he would only manage one more goal in a red shirt, it was a valuable and treasured one.
After being essentially over in mid-January following an FA Cup third round replay humbling as holders at home to third-tier Bolton Wanderers, Liverpool’s dismal season had lurched to a new low when champions-elect Manchester United won at Anfield in early March to leave Souness’s side 15th in the Premier League table and only three points ahead of the relegation zone, successive wins over QPR and Middlesbrough engineering some breathing space above the bottom three while moving the Reds up one place to the giddy heights of 14th by the time the chance to gain revenge for the previous December's derby defeat to struggling Everton at Goodison came around. With the Blues on the same paltry points tally of 42 having played 34 matches (two more than their hosts), it was a far from vintage Merseyside era and a far cry from the decade before when for a spell the two sides were arguably the best in Europe. The fare served up to the packed Anfield crowd reflected that with Toffees having the best chances of a poor game through Stuart Barlow, who missed three one-on-ones to earn the immortal nickname ‘Jigsaw’, and the match seemed to be petering out into a tame stalemate when - a minute into stoppage time - Rosenthal, on as a 76th minute substitute for Steve McManaman, beat the offside trap as he received Ian Rush’s intelligent reverse ball and took a touch to steady himself before thumping the winner into the bottom corner past a rooted Neville Southall in front of a delighted and joy-starved Kop.
Despite the popular misconception that Rosenthal’s most effective performances came as a substitute, his Everton winner was only the fourth of his 22 Liverpool goals to be scored when he’d come off the bench, which is where 56 of his 97 appearances for the club originated from including his final three during the first half of the following season before he was sold to Tottenham for £2.5m in January 1994.
The Israeli was philosophical about how his three and a half years at Anfield played out, saying “I’ve always laughed when people say what a good substitute I am. I’ve not scored that many goals when I’ve been brought on. But when I do come on I make things happen. If I’d played more often from the start then people wouldn’t think that way. When you are a football player, in addition to quality, you need a certain kind of mentality. When I say mentality I mean being able to adapt quickly and to communicate. This is something that I had in me, but sometimes you have good players who don’t adapt. Mentally they are not prepared and everything fails. I was someone who if I arrived in a new country I would learn the language, I would get connected to the people. I felt okay right from the start, and that helped me to survive in Liverpool and in English football where I finished my career.”
He made a hundred first-team appearances for Spurs scoring 11 goals including a sensational second-half hat-trick in an FA Cup replay at Southampton in 1995 before moving on a free transfer to Watford two years later and helped them win promotion back to the second tier before retiring as a player at the end of the 1998/99 season at the age of 35. He then embarked on a career as an independent football consultant in London where the family home remains and, over the course of giving advice to teams on players all over the world for the last 20 years, claims to have discovered players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Vincent Kompany and Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang.
“I have many clubs that call me because they need specific positions,” Rosenthal said. “Working in property, you have a real estate agent who knows exactly the needs of the clients, and knows how to find something that no one sees. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example. I had transferred a player to Newcastle — Hugo Viana — and I was scouting [for players at] Sporting Lisbon in Portugal. That’s how I discovered Cristiano Ronaldo. I’m always ahead in terms of understanding who will reach a certain level, and automatically certain value. Ronaldo made his debut for Sporting Lisbon in August 2002, and I started watching him a month or so after that. I recommended him to Arsenal, Tottenham and others. But they didn’t follow it up. I could have been very rich… very rich!”
As with the ‘what ifs’ that accompanied his playing career, there is no trace of bitterness from a man whose grateful outlook on life seems to reflect his enthusiastic playing style and came shining through when he was asked about You’ll Never Walk Alone and what it meant to him.
“It was amazing, especially the first time during my first game when I entered the pitch. This is something incredible. Liverpool fans are unbelievable. You are a player and you know that this crowd is behind you. You feel that you are already leading this Kop. You have the crowd behind you, who will always support you and not turn against you. They will always support you unconditionally, all the time, and of course this is very important. You feel it. It is a great atmosphere when you play with this crowd behind you. It’s an amazing feeling.”
READ MORE
Chelsea might have just put Liverpool's perfect Mohamed Salah replacement up for sale
Thiago Alcantara names Liverpool team-mate as 'one of the best midfield players I’ve played with'
Jurgen Klopp has already strengthened his Liverpool midfield this summer without anyone realising
Liverpool should take advantage of familiar contract problem to sign boyhood Arsenal fan
Alan Shearer 'certain' about Liverpool signing as Man City message sent
